The advent of COVID-19 triggered a large-scale international mobilization on both political and economic levels. As a result, the focus of attention, effort and resources generated by the COVID-19 pandemic in recent months has been to the detriment of efforts to combat other serious diseases such as HIV, malaria and tuberculosis. It was therefore urgent for programs fighting these diseases to review their operations in order to minimize the impact of COVID-19 on their performance. With this in mind, and at the instigation of the Guinea coordinator, the WARN/CARN-TB executive secretariat undertook, with the support of WHO/TDR, to support tuberculosis programs in West and Central Africa in implementing measures to preserve TB program indicators.
Accordingly, two conference calls were organized with TB program coordinators from member countries on April 8 and 30, 2020. These conferences enabled countries to share their experiences as well as the challenges they face. In particular, issues related to the TB-COVID-19 contingency plan, drug stock management, biosafety of laboratory workers and the difficulties of TB screening and treatment in most countries due to travel restriction measures were addressed.
A questionnaire has been drawn up to gather information on the realities of each country’s response to COVID-19. Data analysis is underway, and the results will soon be shared within the network.